HALO Alumnus Dr. Stella Muthuri is lead author on a paper, “Direct and self-reported measures of physical activity and sedentary behaviours by weight status in school-aged children: results from ISCOLE-Kenya,” that was recently published in the Annals of Human Biology. Citation details and a summary of the paper are below.
Muthuri SK, Wachira LJ, Onywera VO, Tremblay MS. Direct and self-reported measures of physical activity and sedentary behaviours by weight status in school-aged children: results from ISCOLE-Kenya. Ann Hum Biol. 2015 May;42(3):237-45.
ABSTRACT: Background. Previous work has shown little association between self-report and directly measured physical activity. The objective of this study was to investigate the relationships between self-reported and directly assessed measures of physical activity and sedentary time by weight status in Kenyan children. Methods. Direct assessment of body weight, physical activity and sedentary time of 563 children was collected through anthropometry and accelerometry, while self-reported assessment was achieved by administering a questionnaire. Results. Under/healthy weight children had significantly higher directly measured mean daily minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) compared to overweight/obese children (39 vs 20 minutes); had lower mean weekend-day minutes of sedentary time (346 vs 365 minutes); had a higher proportion who met accepted physical activity guidelines (15.3% vs 2.6%); and a higher number reported using active transportation to/from school (49.2% vs 32.4%). Self-reported time spent outside before and after school and active transport to/from school were significantly associated with mean weekday minutes of MVPA (r-value range = 0.12-0.36), but only for the under/healthy weight children. Conclusions. The results of this study found a number of differences in the accumulation of MVPA and sedentary time by weight status and weak-to-moderate correlations between self-report and direct measures of weekday and weekend-day physical activity among the under/healthy weight children.
